外刊听读| 经济学人 电池回收

Green manufacturing

制造业环保

The circular economy

循环经济

Battery-makers are learning that recycling should not be an afterthought

电池制造商逐渐认识到回收不应该是事后补救措施

 

1 MANUFACTURING IS A one-way business. Raw materials go into a factory and finished products come out. Once those goods are sold, producers (initial guarantees apart) usually wash their hands of them. Certainly they do not worry, unless compelled to by law, about how the products are disposed of. Most are burnt or rot in landfill, which pollutes the planet. In only 50 years the world’s consumption of raw materials has nearly quadrupled, to more than 100bn tonnes, according to the latest Circularity Gap Report from the World Economic Forum. Less than 9% of this is reused, resulting in a big waste of materials.

rot 腐烂 

制造业是一个单向行业。原材料进入工厂，然后成品制出。然而，一旦这些产品被售出，生产者（除了最初的售后承诺）通常会洗手不干。当然，除非法律强制要求，他们并不担心产品处理方式。大多数产品都被焚烧或在垃圾填埋场腐烂，这种废物处理方式污染了地球。根据世界经济论坛的最新循环性差距报告，在短短50年内，世界原材料的消耗几乎翻了两番，超过1000亿吨。其中只有不到9%的材料被重新利用，造成了材料的巨大浪费。

 

2 Industry does talk about sustainability and recycling, but much of that is greenwashing intended to improve brand images. Yet in the circular economy the bottom line, too, can benefit from greenery. This is especially so in the case of “gigafactories”, so called because their output of batteries for electric vehicles (EVs) is measured in gigawatt hours (GWh).

 

工业界确实在谈论可持续发展和回收利用，但其中大部分是为了提高品牌形象而进行的环保幌子。然而，在循环经济中，企业最终赢利也可以从环保中受益。在 "千兆工厂"的情况下尤其如此。这样取名的原因是它们为电动汽车（EV）生产电池的产量是以千兆瓦时（GWh）计算的。

 

3 Every carmaking country wants gigafactories. Batteries are the costliest part of an EV, so making them is lucrative. But they contain materials such as lithium, cobalt, manganese and nickel that are pricey and can be hard to obtain. Supply chains are long and complicated. Buyers risk being tarnished by their suppliers’ (or suppliers’ suppliers’) poor environmental and labour standards. Reusing materials makes sense.

 

每个汽车制造国都希望建立千兆工厂。电池是电动车中成本最高的部分，因此制造电池是有利可图的。但它们包含的材料，如锂、钴、锰、镍都价格昂贵且难以获得。供应链是漫长而复杂的。买方有可能因其供应商（或供应商的供应商）的不良环境和不完善劳工标准而名誉受损。所以重复使用材料是有意义的。

 

4 Being new, most gigafactories are designed with recycling in mind from the start. The result is a circular production process, not a linear one. The idea is that once batteries reach the ends of their lives, they should go back to a factory, where their ingredients can be recovered and put into new batteries.

 

电车电池作为一种新事物，大多数千兆工厂从设计之初就考虑到了回收。其设计结果是一套循环的生产过程，而不是一个线性的。我们的想法是，一旦电池达到其寿命终点，它们就应该回到工厂，在那里它们的材料成分可以被回收并投入到新电池中。

 

5 Gigafactories are not yet exemplars of the circular economy, but they are laying the foundations. Northvolt, a Swedish battery-maker, aims by 2030 to produce 150GWh of batteries— enough to power some 2m EVs—from the three gigafactories it is completing. By then, around half its raw materials should come from recycling old batteries. Northvolt is not alone. Using recycling, renewable power and other measures, CATL—a Chinese firm and the world’s biggest producer of EV batteries—thinks it should eventually be possible to shrink the carbon footprint of a battery towards zero.

 

千兆工厂暂时还不是循环经济的典范，但它们正在奠定基础。瑞典电池制造商Northvolt的目标是到2030年生产150GWh的电池--足够为大约200万辆电动车提供动力—其目标来自它正在建造的三个千兆工厂。届时，大约一半的原材料应来自于旧电池的回收。Northvolt并不孤单。宁德时代是一家中国公司，也是世界上最大的电动车电池生产商，它认为利用回收、可再生能源和其他措施，最终应该可以将电池的碳足迹缩小到零。

 

6 Carmakers such as the Renault Group and Stellantis, owner of brands that include Fiat, Chrysler and Peugeot (and whose big shareholder, Exor, also owns a stake in The Economist’s parent company), are both setting up circular-economy businesses. This is not just for batteries, but also for repairing and reconditioning parts and vehicles. Each of these operations will, bosses hope, have annual revenues of more than €2bn ($2bn) by the end of the decade, and be profitable. Renault reckons around 85% of a car is recyclable, but only 20-30% of the materials in new vehicles are recycled, often from other goods. Circular manufacturing would greatly increase that share.

 

雷诺集团和Stellantis（菲亚特、克莱斯勒和标致等品牌的所有者，其大股东Exor也拥有《经济学人》母公司的股份）等汽车制造商都在建立循环经济业务。这不仅仅是指电池，还包括维修和翻新零件和车辆。老板们希望，到十年后，这些业务的年收入都将超过20亿欧元（20亿美元），并实现盈利。雷诺认为，一辆汽车中约有85%是可以回收的，但新车中只有20-30%的材料是可以回收的，而且往往是从其他商品中回收的。循环制造将大大增加这一份额。

 

7 Could other industries do something similar? Fast fashion is a notoriously wasteful business in which little-worn clothes are burnt or dumped. America’s Environmental Protection Agency estimates that the recycling rate for clothing and footwear is just 13%. A big part of the reason is the use of mixed textiles, which are hard to recycle. Clothing companies could, like gigafactories, re-engineer their processes to employ fibres that are easier to handle. Consumer electronics is another business that creates heaps of waste, despite electronic circuits containing precious materials such as gold and silver, and electric motors being made from rare-earth metals like neodymium and dysprosium. Fortunes could yet be made in the urban mining of last year’s gadgets and yesterday’s togs.

 

其他行业可以做类似的事情吗？快速时尚是一个臭名昭著的浪费行业，在这个行业中，几乎没有穿过的衣服会被烧掉或丢弃。美国环境保护局估计，服装和鞋类的回收率只有13%。很大一部分原因是它们采用混合纺织品材料生产，这种材料很难回收。服装公司可以像千兆工厂一样，重新设计它们的生产流程，采用更容易处理的纤维。消费类电子产品是另一个产生大量垃圾的行业，尽管电子电路含有金和银等贵金属材料。电机也是由钕和镝等稀土金属制成。在城市开采去年的小玩意和昨天的衣服也可以获得财富。